An Insider View of the Sleeper Cell Terrorist: A Face Validity Study

Pipes (2003) has proposed a checklist for law enforcement to use in identifying possible members of sleeper cells. The purpose of this research was to evaluate Pipes’ checklist through the judgment of Muslim “insiders.” Thirty-three Muslim insiders responded to Pipes’ checklist by indicating the degree of concern that they believed each item should trigger about a possible sleeper. The sample of Muslim insiders differed predictably concerning how serious they felt the sleeper threat was, and thus in the amount of concern each item raised. However, they were remarkably consistent in the relative amount of concern raised by any particular item. A single “terrorism concern” scale accounted for most of the variance in subjects’ responses.